Tuesday, 9 May 2017

Opinion: Whatever Happened to the Plan to Defeat ISIS?

Whatever Happened to the Plan to Defeat ISIS?

On Jan. 28, President Trump ordered
Secretary of Defense James Mattis to devise a plan, within 30 days, on
how to defeat ISIS. Mattis turned in his report on Feb. 27, and,
according to senior officials, it is still sitting in the White House.
In the 70 days since it landed on his desk, Trump has not responded to
it, modified it, or approved it as policy.

In other words, despite Trump’s claim during the election campaign
that he had a plan for beating ISIS, and his later claim that he would
ask the generals if they had a better idea and act on it quickly if they
did, the administration has no plan—no overarching strategy—for
defeating the fighters and propagandists of the Islamic State.

Mattis’ plan, according to officials who have seen it, is a
“whole-of-government effort,” addressing not just the battle in Syria
and Iraq but also the need for political stability after ISIS is
defeated and a diplomatic settlement, including humanitarian assistance,
throughout the entire region.

The absence of a presidential decision on the plan weighs heavily as
the combatants slog through the final—in some ways, most brutal—round of
fighting in Mosul. Even before Mattis finished his report, Trump
loosened controls on U.S. commanders in the field, letting them decide
on their own whether to drop bombs on targets in populated areas. The
“rules of engagement” weren’t changed, nor did commanders start ignoring
the laws of warfare. But whereas President Obama would often rule on
whether to bomb or refrain if there was some chance that an airstrike
would kill civilians, Trump has let the officer in the field calculate
the probabilities and decide whether they’re too high, or low enough, to
order an attack.

This may be one reason for the recent surge of civilian casualties in
Mosul. In this latest phase of fighting, ISIS militiamen have often
herded residents—those who have stayed—into a building, then put a
sniper up on the roof. The idea is either to deter Iraqi soldiers and
U.S. fighter planes from bombing the building, knowing that dozens of
civilians would die—or to lure them to destroy the building, in the hope
that the survivors and the relatives of those killed will blame the
Iraqis and the Americans for the carnage, thus reigniting opposition to
the Baghdad government and the U.S. military.

The ISIS commanders seem on the verge of defeat in Iraq; the battle
for Mosul is their last stand. But they also understand that the war is
shifting to a new phase—to the struggle for who controls Iraq (and
Syria) even after they’re diminished or defeated on the battlefield. And
they are fighting in a way that has the best chance of sustaining the
chaos and instability—conditions on which their rebellion thrives.

In fact, all the local combatants are positioning themselves for the
next phase. The fighting in Mosul is so intense, in good part, because
one of the leaders in the anti–ISIS coalition, the Popular Mobilization
Forces (PMF), wants it to be intense. On paper, the PMF—which comprises
more than one-third of the allied fighters in Mosul—has been
incorporated into the Iraqi army, but in fact, it remains true to its
origins as a Shiite militia, backed by—and loyal to—Iran.

During the run-up to the battle for Mosul, U.S. military advisers
wanted to keep a route clear, so that ISIS militias could evacuate the
city. First, it would be easier to pummel the militias out in the open
than to engage them in door-to-door urban combat. Second, fewer
civilians trapped in the city would be killed, and fewer homes would be
destroyed.

But, according to a senior officer involved in these discussions, the
PMF leaders rejected the advice. Their goal, all along, has been to
establish Shiite dominance throughout Iraq—especially in the province of
Nineveh, of which Mosul is the capital. They want to punish Mosul, a majority Sunni city. And they want
to weaken the Iraqi Security Forces, the country’s established army,
which has taken the brunt of casualties in the urban war of attrition,
thus leaving the PMF as Iraq’s dominant military force.

So the noose was wrapped entirely around Mosul, with no escape
routes, and ISIS dug in to fight. The Iraqi army’s approach to this sort
of battle plays right into the PMF’s desire for maximum destruction. As
they have shown in previous battles over the years—Ramadi, Fallujah,
Bayii, and Sinjar—Iraqi officers don’t bother with the delicate task of clearing
buildings that the enemy occupies. Instead, they flatten the buildings,
then occupy the rubble. That’s what has happened in Mosul; it has made
the fighting more intense, and it will make the recovery more prolonged
and difficult.

The combatants’ rush to position themselves for the era after the
fall of ISIS—whether the era is one of negotiations or further
conflict—also explains Turkey’s recent airstrikes against the Kurdish
militias that have been the United States’ most effective allies in the
fight against Islamic State on the Syrian side of the border.

The Turks see ISIS as a foe, but they regard the Kurds as an
existential threat. This is the biggest thing that Trump doesn’t
understand and that few Western leaders grasp until they look at this
conflict up close. “To everybody but us,” one senior military officer
told me, “the defeat of ISIS is the least important goal.”

This is why, as the defeat of ISIS draws near, the lack of a coherent
U.S. strategy—or, more precisely, Trump’s hesitation or refusal to
accept, adapt, or do something with Mattis’ plan—is such a
source of anxiety. All the other players in this politico-military
fight—the leaders of Iraq, Syria, Iran, Russia, Turkey, the Gulf States,
the Sunni powers (especially Saudi Arabia), and the various militias,
whether jihadist or anti-jihadist—know what their interests are and how
they want the game to play out.

Only the United States doesn’t know, or hasn’t clearly expressed, its
interests and desires. One senior official put it to me bluntly: “There
is no clearly articulated end-point.” Yet this is what strategy is
about: aligning a nation-state’s interests with the resources it wants
to commit to fulfilling those interests. Trump is escalating
U.S.–military involvement in all the battles of the region, but without a
strategy—without an “articulated end-point”—escalation is senseless.

As Trump has discovered about health care and every other issue that
he takes a look at, the fight against ISIS is a lot more complicated
than he’d thought. Mattis has ideas, but neither he nor anyone else in
the administration can put them in motion until the president decides
just what it is he wants to do. We may be waiting a long time for that
to happen, as the chaos continues to spiral and the bombs continue to
fall.